Recalling Jayne
I have been chatting quite a bit with a new friend recently, who has been listening to Camille Yarbrough–one of the greatest civil rights/afrocentric wordsmiths out there. There is, in this breed of startlingly stark and touching poet/writers, the truthful June Jordan, the beloved Nikki Giovanni, the sublime Rita Dove, and perhaps the most famous and quoted, Maya Angelou. But the one poet that comes to mind most often for me is Jayne Cortez.
Today, in recalling my adoration for her, I looked up her profile, and was chuffed to see her poem, “There It Is” encapsulated in purple. As I read those words again for the first time in years, it struck me how apt–with the fire of Obama, pigs with lipstick, bridges to nowhere, and memorialized tragedies– the words of this simple poem are.
There It Is
And if we don’t fight
if we don’t resist
if we don’t organize and unify and
get the power to control our own lives
Then we will wear
the exaggerated look of captivity
the stylized look of submission
the bizarre look of suicide
the dehumanized look of fear
and the decomposed look of repression
forever and ever and ever
And there it is
And to this at this time I say, Amen.